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Radio Address - Sen. Burton Wheeler (D-MT)
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy May 08, 2009 09:22pm |
| Category | Speech |
| News Date | Dec 31, 1940 12:00pm |
| Description | The views I express to you tonight… are not the views of any international banker, nor are they dictated by interventionists or warmongers.
The thoughts I am about to express are not based upon any fear of wild boasts of American conquest by Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini. I know that neither they nor their ideologies will capture the people of the United States or our imagination to the point that we would adopt fascism, communism or nazism as an American doctrine.…
We sympathize with the oppressed and persecuted everywhere. We also realize that we have great problems at home, that one-third of our population is ill-fed, ill-housed and ill-clad, and we have been told repeatedly, upon the highest authority, that unless and until this situation is corrected our democracy is in danger. I fully subscribe to this view. Believing as I do, in this thesis, I cannot help but feel that we should settle our own problems before we undertake to settle the problems of Asia, Africa, Australasia, South America and Europe. As Americans, interested first in America, what is our present stake? Our stakes are our independence, our democracy and our trade and commerce. Every red-blooded American would fight to preserve them.
What is the best way to preserve them? There are two schools of thought. One group feels, as they felt before the last World War, that England is our first line of defense, and that we must go to England’s aid every time she declares war, and that some European dictator is after rich loot in the United States, perhaps our gold buried in the hills of Kentucky.
This group wants to repeal our Neutrality Act and the Johnson Act. They want to loan our ships, our guns, and our planes, even though it may involve us in the European conflict. They profess to believe it is necessary for the preservation of our country, our religion and civilization. We were told the same things in almost the same terms before the last war. |
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